Informatica PowerCenter 8x Key Concepts -3

dministration Console

The Administration Console is a web application that we use to administer the PowerCenter domain and PowerCenter security. There are two pages in the console, Domain Page & Security Page.
We can do the following In Domain Page:

o Create & manage application services like Integration Service and Repository Service

o Create and manage nodes, licenses and folders

o Restart and shutdown nodes

o View log events

o Other domain management tasks like applying licenses and managing grids and resources

We can do the following in Security Page:

o Create, edit and delete native users and groups

o Configure a connection to an LDAP directory service. Import users and groups from the LDAP directory service

o Create, edit and delete Roles (Roles are collections of privileges)

o Assign roles and privileges to users and groups

o Create, edit, and delete operating system profiles. An operating system profile is a level of security that the Integration Services uses to run workflows

4. PowerCenter Client

Designer, Workflow Manager, Workflow Monitor, Repository Manager & Data Stencil are five client tools that are used to design mappings, Mapplets, create sessions to load data and manage repository.

Mapping is an ETL code pictorially depicting logical data flow from source to target involving transformations of the data. Designer is the tool to create mappings

Designer has five window panes, Source Analyzer, Warehouse Designer, Transformation Developer, Mapping Designer and Mapplet Designer.

Source Analyzer:

Allows us to import Source table metadata from Relational databases, flat files, XML and COBOL files. We can only import the source definition in the source Analyzer and not the source data itself is to be understood. Source Analyzer also allows us to define our own Source data definition.

Warehouse Designer:

Allows us to import target table definitions which could be Relational databases, flat files, XML and COBOL files. We can also create target definitions manually and can group them into folders. There is an option to create the tables physically in the database that we do not have in source analyzer. Warehouse designer doesn’t allow creating two tables with same name even if the columns names under them vary or they are from different databases/schemas.

Transformation Developer:

Transformations like Filters, Lookups, Expressions etc that have scope to be re-used are developed in this pane. Alternatively Transformations developed in Mapping Designer can also be reused by checking the option‘re-use’ and by that it would be displayed under Transformation Developer folders.

Mapping Designer:

This is the place where we actually depict our ETL process; we bring in source definitions, target definitions, transformations like filter, lookup, aggregate and develop a logical ETL program. In this place it is only a logical program because the actual data load can be done only by creating a session and workflow.

Mapplet Designer:

We create a set of transformations to be used and re-used across mappings.

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